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FreeBSD September-October 2002 Development Status

Posted by timothy on from the behind-the-scenes dept.

mbadolato writes "A new status report documenting the latest goings on in FreeBSD has been published. There's some good information n there about the features for the upcoming 5.0 release. BTW, there happens to be a lot of stuff going in there for something that is, according to the trolls, dead! ;-)"

9 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    out there? I knew people who would not run Linux, period - BSD ONLY! Just curious if there are still those out there? What do those people think of Linux in its current stage (2.6)? Do you still think of the Linux camp as a bunch of neophytes who were in kindergarten when BSD was being developed?

    1. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Anonymous+Cowrad · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, there are a few of us.

      I won't run anything but FreeBSD/OpenBSD on my servers, and I won't run anything but OS X on my desktops. I've never found a task that I couldn't get done elegantly with those operating systems.

      I don't think of the Linux people as bleeding edge maniacs, I completely understand their motives for choosing Linux. It's a neat OS, and if I were going to build a pc-based desktop, I might look into it, too.

      What it comes down to for me is that BSD works for me. Linux might be equally capable of meeting my server needs, but I've yet to see a compelling reason to switch. If anyone has any good reasons, I'd love to hear them. Is there a Linux version of Apple's "Switch" campaign? :P

      I'm in no position to evaluate current Linux distributions as I haven't tinkered with one in a couple years.

      --

      --
      pants ahoy
    2. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by zulux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I use, delpoy and love OpenBSD and FreeBSD both. I view both *BSD's (and NetBSD) as slightly more reliable than Linux. But increasingly enough, I'm starting to find the diferences between the free Unix varients almost irelevent - it's the user-space applications that I care most about:

      Example: If FreeBSD dropped off the face of the eart and I could only use Linux - i'd just shrug. But if PostgreSQL or Samba died, then I'd really be pissed.

      Even more weird, increasingly, I'm finding the diferences between Windows and Unix almost becoming moot - If they both have Mozilla, Emacs and can run OpenOffice then, increasingly, Windows is becoming irrelevent to any of my needs. It's just another OS.

      --

      Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.

    3. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Garin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, I'd say I'm a "medium"-core BSD-er. I spent a lot of time with Linux -- I cut my teeth on the late 1.x/early 2.0 kernels in the Slackware days. I moved on to try Redhat, SuSE, and Mandrake seriously (and many others fleetingly). Then about two or three years ago, I tried FreeBSD and I've never looked back since. It all happened when I tried to upgrade to a new version of glibc (remember that?). Holy cow was that ever a mess... I was so pissed off that I wiped the drive and installed FreeBSD -- it was purely a rage-induced reaction.

      After that, I was hooked. Don't get me wrong, Linux is tons of fun. But that's just it -- maintaining a current system can be a hobby unto itself. I honestly think that's why so many people really dig it. There's always hacking and work to be done. There's always some stuff that is broken and needs to be fixed. It seems like a Linux installation stays fresh and good for about a year at the most, and then you have to wipe and reinstall from scratch due to accumulated annoyances. For bleeding edge hacker types, that sort of thing isn't a problem -- they do it anyhow, and think of it as fun. I did for a while too, but then I got tired of it.

      FreeBSD was such a welcome release. It just -works-. Between the base system and the ports, it's all flawless. With every new release, I'd run the ol' "make buildworld" and a whole new system would magically appear an hour later. In three years of updating, the update never failed once. I've never had to reinstall from scratch, and so I'm still running the system that I installed all those years ago.

      Anyhow, I know it's possible to stay stable with linux. Debian appears to do this quite well, and if I were to run Linux again, I'm sure I'd be happy with Debian. It's just.. I dunno. There's nothing -wrong- with Linux, it's just not my style any more. FreeBSD has this incredible simplicity that I've never found anywhere else (FWIW, I do find the same things with Net/OpenBSD, I just find that FreeBSD is a friendlier desktop).

      --
      In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
    4. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Matty_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I feel exactly the same way. Two years ago this month I switched to FreeBSD from RedHat, and have never looked back. My FreeBSD server started out on version 4.2-RELEASE and is now up to 4-STABLE (as of a month ago). Runs great.

    5. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by mrneutron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I've run linux since Slackware & the beta kernel days. That era ended (professionally) when I had to support production internet servers (Squid http proxy, sendmail gateways, and apache web servers) running the Linux 2.4 kernel (AKA the 'kernel of pain').

      Lots of unstability, phantom escalating tcp timeouts, and high-traffic production boxes would crash or become unstable after 1-3 weeks of use, requiring a reboot. I upgraded the 2.4 kernel multiple times, but never resolved all problems.

      I'm still a fan, but Linux really stumbled with the 2.4 kernel. There's always a balance between features and stability, and 2.4 got that balance wrong. Very wrong.

      I switched all production servers to FreeBSD. One of the best decisions of my career. 10 months later: 100% uptime. Literally. Same hardware, same applications, same network, more users, heavier usage. Rock !@#$-ing solid.

  2. Still no by dar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Still no Scsi emulation support, I see. I thought that was going to be in 5.0?

    --
    My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
    1. Re:Still no by akharon · · Score: 4, Informative

      Um, look into atapicam. It's in -STABLE right now, and has been in -CURRENT for even longer. (I'm assuming you're talking about being able to use cdrecord on ide cd-r(w)'s)

  3. One here - but it's "what you know" not "who" by DrSkwid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think it's fair to brand anybody anything for using an operating system, especially using "you are young" as an insult.

    The things I like about FreeBSD /usr/ports
    It's an easy search term in google.
    It's obscurity

    Ein Users, Ein OS, Ein FreeBSD

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter